Moment With Betty

One may ask, what is spiritual direction?  For me spiritual direction is simply the act of deepening one’s relationship with God, or learning all it takes to grow in one’s personal spirituality.  Here, the person seeking direction shares personal experiences from his/her struggles with the director; how he/she is getting attuned to the spiritual life as well as their personal encounter so far with God. All this is done with the view of getting advice and guidance from the Director.

Spiritual direction is also the help given by one believer to another that enables the latter to pay more attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personal communication from God, to grow in intimacy with God, and to live out the consequences of this relationship with God.

Spiritual direction is first and foremost meant to facilitate our relationship with God and secondly to deal with issues in our relationship with others. It also has to do with our relationship with ourselves; how we can grow in the life of virtue and the way we resolve personal obstacles that stand in the way of our love of God and love of neighbor.

As earlier noted, spiritual direction takes usually takes place between two people – the Director and the Directee (the directee being the receiver while the director is the provider of the advice and guidance). The best way to understand it better is to think of the relationship between the doctor and the patient. Just as the medical doctor takes care of the patient’s bodily health so does the spiritual director take care of the soul of the Directee and offers him/ her the opportunity to examine their relationship with God, with the aim of making steady progress in the spiritual life.

In terms of regularity of meeting, ideally the Director and the Directee meet regularly; either bi-weekly or monthly, for conversation and prayer. In spiritual direction, the focus is one’s daily experience and relationship with God. However, it could also involve general conversation, prayers, some silence to help us meditate or reading of a passage from the scripture. There is no hard and fast rule to follow, just to be open- minded. It requires both parties to listen and be honest in their conversation. Telling it the way it is without hiding facts, because the bottom line is getting to know more about God and experiencing HIM more in our lives.

Spiritual direction is a discipline open to anyone who wants to deepen their relationship with God. However, since it is about reflecting on one’s experience with God, it is perhaps more beneficial to those who have been on the journey of faith for a while than for newcomers to the faith.

Sincerity:- According to wikipedia, Sincerity is the virtue of one who communicates and acts in accordance with the entirety of their feelings, beliefs, thoughts, and desires in a manner that is honest and genuine. So, for sincerity in spiritual direction to happen, you have to ensure that the dumb devil mentioned in the gospel does not get to your soul. Get rid of it immediately so that everything will turn out well. Resolve right from the beginning to be sincere in the spiritual direction and keep good mannerism. More so you need to stay focused. We all have our defects but we should not allow our defects to be reason for us to turn away from God’s love. If tweaking stories or tales is part of your way of life you must be mindful to avoid that during spiritual direction. Remember that three people are actually involved in this spiritual exercise: God, the Spiritual Director and yourself (the Directee).

 For what is worth, let us be wholeheartedly sincere, no falsifying of facts, embellishment or exaggeration of the story during spiritual direction. Also be sincerely apologetic without reservation or misgivings, if you default.

 Trust is synonymous to sincerity. Why? Because if you are sincere, people will trust you and have confidence in you. Trust also promotes self-confidence. In a situation where you are not truthful to your partner, colleague or your spiritual director, you cannot be relied upon or be trusted, and whatever you say would not be relied upon as credible. More so if there is no trust, we cannot rely on one another. And in that case we cannot even be sure that the spiritual director will direct us right. Lack of trust makes it difficult for a person to rely on others or respect their opinion or point-of-view.

So, in spiritual direction, it is clearly obvious that we need to build trust between each other. We also need to be sincere and most importantly have faith in our Spiritual Director who is representing God during the exercise. Remember that we said at the beginning that three people are involved in Spiritual Direction. This is where the strength of our faith must play out.

If we do not have a reasonable level of faith in this process, we will go back as empty as we may have started out. Faith plays a lot of part in any religious endeavor we undertake. Trust me, with faith, we are spiritually convinced with strong belief in the Christian doctrines, rather than looking for proof. Faith brings about complete trust or confidence in someone or something and this very important because Faith is the pathway for abundance. So be sure to hold it in the forefront of your mind. You cannot say you have faith in someone and at the same time doubt the person’s ability or the outcome of the process managed or coordinated by the person.

Going by D. Elton Trueblood’s quote below, do not be afraid to expect the very best of life for yourself. Trust that God exists and that he is with you, and by following him you are assured of a world beyond this present one.